Dear Mr. Hustveit,

You did have the good manners to warn us in the abstract of your essay that it would be totally incomprehensible, and you were right. What on earth is "a kind of thought experiment to discern what the universe's smallest element must be and how it might be possible to build the universe from it and argues why it is spatial finite and probably temporal finite" How many kinds of thought experiments are there presently in existence and how does one differentiate between their applicability? How can one know for certain that one is thinking about anything and not inadvertently merely thoughtfully experimenting with contradictory speculation? Are you the only person capable of thought experimentation?

Mr. Hustvelt,

Hi. While I don't understand everything in your essay, I agree completely with the basic premise that thinking about the universe is best achieved by thinking of a fundamental building block and then trying to figure out how the universe can be derived from it. My essay will be along the same lines.

On your specific points, I agree that our universe is discrete, but I think it's possible that whether or not a universe is viewed as discrete or continuous depends on one's perspective relative to the universe. For instance, an infinite-sized observer (relative to the discrete objects in our universe) outside our universe might view our universe as continuous, just like we might view the set of elements between 0 and 1 as continuous.

That time depends on action seems to make perfect sense, IMHO. Also, as you mention, starting from a single bit which then replicates itself to produce a bigger universe seems like a good way to start a universe with very low entropy.

If you're interested, some very similar ideas are at my website at:

sites.google.com/site/ralphthewebsite

Anyways, good essay!

Roger

    Dear Sir,

    I read every word of your absurd essay including its hilarious opening "The first issue we must sort out is; is the universe continous (sic) or discrete? Absolutely everything is built on top of something that is either continous (sic) or discrete."

    My sensible essay BITTERS correctly describes the absolute states the real occurring Universe subscribes to: One (1) real Universe can only be eternally occurring in one real here and now while perpetually traveling at one real "speed" of light through one real infinite dimension once. One is the absolute of everything. (1) is the absolute of number. Real is the absolute of being. Universe is the absolute of energy. Eternal is the absolute of duration. Occurring is the absolute of action. Here and now are absolutes of location and time. Perpetual is the absolute of ever. Traveling is the absolute of conveyance method. Light is the absolute of speed. Infinite dimension is the absolute of distance and once is the absolute of history.

    The word continuous, even when it is spelled correctly is pretty meaningless, as is the word discrete. Everything in the real Universe is actually unique once and complete in itself.

    Dear Sir,

    As we have already explained real numbers are discrete units. Fractions are also discrete units of the subdivision of the earlier unit by the denominator. But when you refer to "the count of real numbers between two different real numbers", do you mean to say that the real numbers are analog? If you have two apples, the interval between them is also full of apples? It is beyond our understanding. We assign the discreteness to dimension. In solids, it is fixed, in fluids, it is loose and is affected by the container and in plasma, it is unbound.

    Mathematics is related also to the measurement of area or curves on a graph - the so-called mathematical structures, which are two dimensional structures. Thus, the basic assumptions of all topologies, including symplectic topology, linear and vector algebra and the tensor calculus, all representations of vector spaces, whether they are abstract or physical, real or complex, composed of whatever combination of scalars, vectors, quaternions, or tensors, and the current definition of the point, line, and derivative are necessarily at least one dimension less from physical space.

    The graph may represent space, but it is not space itself. The drawings of a circle, a square, a vector or any other physical representation, are similar abstractions. The circle represents only a two dimensional cross section of a three dimensional sphere. The square represents a surface of a cube. Without the cube or similar structure (including the paper), it has no physical existence. An ellipse may represent an orbit, but it is not the dynamical orbit itself. The vector is a fixed representation of velocity; it is not the dynamical velocity itself, and so on. The so-called simplification or scaling up or down of the drawing does not make it abstract. The basic abstraction is due to the fact that the mathematics that is applied to solve physical problems actually applies to the two dimensional diagram, and not to the three dimensional space.

    The numbers are assigned to points on the piece of paper or in the Cartesian graph, and not to points in space. If one assigns a number to a point in space, what one really means is that it is at a certain distance from an arbitrarily chosen origin. Thus, by assigning a number to a point in space, what one really does is assign an origin, which is another point in space leading to a contradiction. The point in space can exist by itself as the equilibrium position of various forces. But a point on a paper exists only with reference to the arbitrarily assigned origin. If additional force is applied, the locus of the point in space resolves into two equal but oppositely directed field lines. But the locus of a point on a graph is always unidirectional and depicts distance - linear or non-linear, but not force. Thus, a physical structure is different from its mathematical representation. Hence you cannot apply these so-called mathematical concepts to physics or information.

    All information is in a relation between an object and a concept defining that object. Interconnectedness and interdependence are the laws of Nature. But then there is a concept of eigenfunctions and eigenvalues. You cannot make any combinations. There are rabbits and there are horns, but you cannot describe a rabbit with horns except in dreams.Kindly ponder over it.

    Regards,

    basudeba

    Hi again basudeba,

    This may be the result of a mutual misunderstanding but real numbers are not discrete. Due to my lazy nature I borrowed this from wikipedia: "a real number is a value that represents a quantity along a continuous line." And to me the rest of the text in your comment seems like you have thrown in all the names of mathematical concepts you know of to make an argument without any content. It is entirely my fault that I was not able to write my essay in a way that communicated my ideas to you, but you are ranting away with things that are at best loosely connected to what I actually wrote. For example in your first comment you trail of with division by zero which was not mentioned in the essay. And Mahavira's handling of the division by zero problem isn't actually very successful. But it very interesting from a historical point of view. What I tried to do in my essay, was to argue why the foundations of the universe is discrete and finite and how it can be possible to use this knowledge to

    explore the universe from the bottom and up.

    Regards

    Kjetil

    Hi Akinbo,

    I really like the monad idea and I think your essay was elegantly written (I've only had time to skim through it now but will read it closer later today). I think the idea of finding the simplest way to describe a phenomena is very central. Thanks for pointing me to the Leibniz text

    Regards

    Kjetil

    Dear Sir,

    You must be really lazy. For in the Wikipedia, you missed "These descriptions of the real numbers are not sufficiently rigorous by the modern standards of pure mathematics" in the beginning of the next para. With this ostrich like behavior, we wonder, how far you can go. Please stop insulting others for your lack of understanding. We terminate this correspondence here.

    Regards,

    basudeba

    Hi Koorosh,

    With a discrete universe I mean that there is a smallest unit which cannot be divided. These smallest bits are connected though relations between them. How these bits are related define space, matter and forces. The idea is that if its possible to prove that a simple structure can express everything we observe, them this has to be the universes fundamental building block. (I think that is possible but I certainly haven't proven that yet)

    5 days later

    Dear Kjetil

    I agree with your notions of building blocks. I think serious physicists have to explore such a way. As such theories develop however, they have to explain many things... its a big job! I too start with a building block proposed here: Beautiful Universe Theory . Also Franklin Hu in this contest and I agree with him that the time dimension is derivative from a universal 'tick'. Others in the past have chosen a tetrahedral building block. I feel a binary building block may be too simplistic because it needs to explain Planck's (h) which is in units of angular momentum. Did Wheeler deal with (h) in his suggestion?

    Whatever the case the devil, they say, is in the details...the Universe took 13 billion years to use its supposed building block...and we have to do it in one lifetime!

    Best wishes

    Vladimir

    Dear Vladimir,

    it is so good to hear others thinking about these issues. (And thanks for pointing out Franklins essay) I haven't had time to read the whole of the Beautiful Universe Theory yet - it was a lot - but I like the way the idea goes. Even though we may have somewhat different views. I believe that the bottom up approach can and will be very useful, but it may very well turn out to be too complicated to actually get any useful results.

    And it may turn out that the binary building block is to simplistic but I think that as a logical smallest unit it may be even smaller than planck units describing structures with the right properties and functionality to match our experimentally verified view of physics. The smallest bit could for example make up strings in string theory and the interactions between them could be the strings oscillations. Angular momentum is in itself an interesting construct. Somehow it has to be a kind of loop of interactions i think. I'm not aware of how Wheeler dealt with this, though I'm sure he must have given it a lot of thought.

    I think that to really advance with this bottom up approach we need much more mathematics than I can offer. But it may be possible to start with proving that a smallest bit construct can represent everything we can throw on it. It may be fruitful to start with things we think should be impossible to represent - in order to have as few cycles of trying out versions of the smallest bits. For example I don't think one relation from each bit will work, as it will be kind of single threaded, but right now I don't know so it has to be proven that it wont work. And then we there are about 20 orders of magnitude from the size of the proton to planck length, so it should be enough elbow room to conjure up considerable complexity. It may not be possible to do this in one life time but cooperating the efforts will certainly help.

    PS. Your 3DD stuff is very, very cool.

    Best regards

    Kjetil

    6 days later

    Dear Kjetil

    Thank you for your nice response, for confirming some things either you or I mentioned. Physics has become so 'obese' with top-heavy and too-imaginary ideas that a new approach in tiny realistic 'fundamental' steps should be tried.

    I am happy you liked the 3DD - it is of course a wholly non-digital approach 0- but its been some 3 decades since I practically stopped the 3DD development because I thought digital versions would be immediaely adopted. Instead we now have 3D graphics but it is very different from what I imagined.

    By the way I found out that J.C. Maxwell the physicist made stereoscopic drawings of xyz functions!

    Best wishes,

    Vladimir

    Hi Kjetil,

    I am afraid I am going to have to disagree with you on your statement in your last paragraph which says; "The ideas presented does not actually overthrow any other theories nor make any spectacular predictions,..." You make an amazing prediction in this statement "For a temporal finite universe with a start and end, the amount of information contained in the universe must be able to change." For me that statement suggest a 'conservation of information' in the same vein as 'conservation of energy'. Energy can not be created nor destroyed only transformed. You are saying information can not be created nor destroyed only transformed. When I think I have acquired new information, it never occurred to me that information where it came from was changed in some way. Just because I can't perceive it doesn't mean it didn't happen. That is deep, deep, deep. I love it. Thanks for the enlightenment.

    Jim Akerlund